Victor A. Kramer and Robert A. Ross, eds.
Harlem Renaissance Re-examined
Troy, NY: Whitston. 1997. Pp. 416. $19.95
Reviewed by Axel Knoenagel
Afro-American writing now forms an integral part of world literature. The 1993 Nobel Prize for Toni Morrison was only the most obvious and most prestigious of the many awards and appreciations that have been bestowed on black American literature in the past decades. But Afro-American writing has not been enjoying this high reputation for a long time. It was not until the 1920s that black literature received positive criticism. For about eight years-between 1921 and 1929-Harlem became the center of a newly self-confident artistic scene that is generally referred to as the “Harlem Renaissance.”
The cultural assessment of the Harlem Renaissance has been an ongoing project of numerous critics. Several collections of essays mark the progress in this debate. One of them, Harlem Renaissance Re-examined, originally published in 1987, has now been reissued in a revised and updated version. Framed by a gallery of photos, a chronology, and a bibliography, the book presents nineteen essays and an interview with one of the longest living members of that group of artists, novelist Dorothy West.
The Harlem Renaissance was one of the most fascinating phases in modern American literature; at its heart was, as John Cooley asserts, “a serious effort on the part of black artists to interpret black life on its own terms” (85). Many of the artists discussed in the book-Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Zora Neal Hurston being the most prominent-now form part of the canon of modern American literature. Not only did they-poets, most of them-attempt to “reinterpret black life in America and thereby provide a more accurate, more objective, representation of black people than that popularized in the … literature of the preceding decades” (333), their movement also constituted a unique force in Afro-American history. As Carolyn C. Denard asserts, the Harlem Renaissance “was a moment, whether naively believed or successfully realized or not, when the creative arts, not economic determinism, nor political strategy, nor constitutional rhetoric, nor military strength, but the arts were believed to be an agent through which individuals could effect social change” (378; original emphasis).
The essays in this volume focus not only on the literary products of the Harlem Renaissance but also on the social and artistic circumstances of that movement. Self-confident Afro-American writing was a novelty in the 1920s and had to find its place in the context of the established literary scene. Consequently, the analysis of white patronage and of white contributions to the Harlem Renaissance-most notably Carl Van Vechten’s novel Nigger Heaven-takes up a significant portion of the book.
The literary analysis of Harlem Renaissance fiction presents some interesting insights. John Lowe examines the role of humor in the works of Zora Neale Hurston and concludes that “she functions as a kind of guide or translator, initiating a presumably white reader into the mysteries of Black language and folklore” (310). The role of “interpreter of black life” for a largely white audience became an important function for numerous Harlem Renaissance artists. Rudolph Fisher was, as Margaret Perry argues, determined to become this interpreter. This made him “a satirist and social historian through the medium of the short story; thus we have an accurate portrait of Harlem during the 1920s, whether or not one believes this is the proper function of imaginative literature” (277).
The essays collected in Harlem Renaissance Re-examined discuss a wide range of topics and together provide a useful survey of the first period of American literary history in which Afro-American artists attempted to define their roles and aesthetics on their own terms. The book does its topic justice, and serves both as an introduction and as a source for in-depth study.